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Christie’s Regional Handicap

By Clyde Haberman October 6, 2011 8:31 amOctober 6, 2011 8:31 am

When former Gov. George E. Pataki announced in August, to the consternation of almost no one, that he would not run for president, I wrote about the backwater that New York had become in national politics.

Not that this state is short of estimable men and women who have gazed longingly at the White House. But none have succeeded since Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose first election was nearly 80 years ago. (Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard M. Nixon were both in New York when they won, but they were essentially passing through.)

On reflection, that column was too narrow. It isn’t just New Yorkers who have a tough time on the national stage. Almost anyone from the Northeast has a problem. That was reinforced by word from Gov. Chris (“Now is not my time”) Christie of New Jersey that he would not seek the Republican presidential nomination.

For Democrats, the regional handicap has been evident for a long while, as demonstrated by the failed candidacies of two eminently serious men from Massachusetts, Michael S. Dukakis and John Kerry.

“The Northeast has sort of been depicted in popular culture, as well as in the words of hostile politicians, as a place of effete intellectuals or overbred aristocrats, people who aren’t in the mainstream,” said Ross K. Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University.

Bill Curry, a former Democratic candidate for Connecticut governor who is now a political analyst, suggested that “nominating somebody from the Northeast is like nominating your high school principal for Student Council president.”

Plainly, Mr. Christie does not come across as either an effete intellectual or an overbred aristocrat. His is a different problem: He is a Republican from the Northeast. To win in New Jersey he has had to embrace moderate positions on certain social issues — he even nominated a Muslim to the bench — that make heads swivel on the conservative outer edges that increasingly define the national party.

The system of primaries works against Republicans like him, said Ester Fuchs, a political scientist at Columbia University. The agenda in those primaries is so dominated by the far right, Professor Fuchs said, that it “produces candidates who don’t reflect the mainstream of even party politics.”

“Over time, they have increasing difficulty nominating any kind of centrist to the presidency,” she said, “and this is why Republicans from the Northeast get excluded.”

Mr. Christie was but the latest new face cast as a potential savior by reverent Republicans, only to decide against entering the fray. Sarah Palin did the same on Wednesday. President Obama benefited from similar exaltation on the Democratic side in 2008, as if he were a superhero who could instantly clean up multiple messes that were years in the making. When he turned out to be merely mortal, many within his party began to sulk.

“Our burn rate on politicians is huge,” Professor Baker said.

That is certainly true these days for the Republicans, who have been conspicuously fickle in their search for a redeemer, bouncing among the likes of Ms. Palin, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain and, of late, Mr. Christie. They even had Donald Trump in the game for a while, bizarre as that was.

One Republican candidate from the Northeast has managed to stay clear of these shoals. That would be Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor. Mr. Romney has done it by unabashedly disavowing his years in the State House; compared with him, a weather vane is a symbol of constancy. “Very few people are as fleet of tongue as he is,” Mr. Curry said.

Mr. Christie, as a self-styled straight shooter, is not nearly as adroit.

“Can you nominate a Republican from the Northeast?” Mr. Curry said. “Only if he renounces his entire history, identity and previously known value system. It’s totally impossible, and that includes Christie. Christie is right if he thinks this isn’t his time to be the Republican nominee for president. But he’s dead wrong if he thinks that his time is ever coming.”

The Post reports that Paul Dudley, the pilot of the helicopter that crashed on Tuesday, pleaded guilty in 1980 to charges that he stole thousands of dollars from a friend’s restaurant on Staten Island. [New York Post]

Mayor Bloomberg commissioned a $1 million study that showed that raising wages for “low-skilled” work in the city would cost up to 13,000 jobs. Comptroller John C. Liu reportedly said the figures were terribly flawed. [Gothamist]

Defense lawyers are furious that the Bronx district attorney refuses to release the names of the 530 police officers involved in the ticket-fixing scandal. [Daily News]

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